A short daytime nap modulates levels of emotions objectively evaluated by the emotion spectrum analysis method.

A novel objective technique, the emotion spectrum analysis method, was first applied to investigate emotional fluctuations before, during and after a daytime nap in eight healthy young adults (four males and four females). The subjects were allowed to freely nap between 13.00 and 14.00 h, in which stages 1 and 2 non-rapid eye movement sleep occurred on average for 5.9 and 20.8 min, respectively. Emotional components such as anger, joy, relaxation and sadness were numerically estimated on the basis of spatio-temporal behavior of 21-channel electroencephalogram and analyzed statistically. In comparison with the prenap waking level, the magnitudes of the anger, joy and relaxation components remained stably unchanged during the nap but elevated significantly during the postnap waking period. The sadness component exhibited little significant change throughout the observation period. From the results, we suggest that a short daytime nap modulates the emotions to improve the postnap mental states.